Professor Dame Til Wykes takes part in Hussain's House Live
More than 1000 school students descended on the Hackney Empire for the UK’s largest youth mental health festival, Hussain’s House Live. Hosted by poet Hussain Manawer, the event explored topics such as anxiety, bullying and depression featuring talks and performances by influencers and artists, with King’s College London as the event’s education partner.
Professor Dame Til Wykes, Vice Dean Psychology & Systems Sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, gave a speech on how common it is to experience mental health problems, and urged the young people present to talk about and take care of their mental health.
‘People who are footballers and hurdlers have mental health problems and are now talking about it -even people playing in the World Cup. You can win a gold medal in the Olympics and still have had a mental health problem. We can’t help people if they don’t talk about it.’
‘In a class of 30 there is likely to be three people who have mental health difficulties. Although the rates were stable there is now a rapid rise in young women and young men who self-harm – in young women between 16 and 24 it used to be one in 20 in 2000 but in 2014-15 it had risen to one in 5.’
‘Look after your mental health – exercise, just enjoy nature, get some sleep, enjoy your friends, learn new things so feel the achievement, but also take a break.’
The show featured performers, poets, musicians, comedians, DJs and artists including Sam Tompkins, Mim Shaikh, The Slumflower, Meggan Roxanne, the Corner Shop Show, Jam Osman, Najwa Zebian, Jay R Ellis, Sonna Relé and Hussain Manawer himself who performed a new poem written for the occasion.
Speaking about the event Hussain said: ‘Depression and anxiety affect us all in different ways and to varying degrees, but modern society expects people to be unbreakable and immune to nervous breakdown. For guys, failure to be in control of things 24/7 is seen as an embarrassing loss of masculinity.’
‘More young people have problems with their mental health today than 30 years ago. Suicide is the single biggest killer of young men in the UK.’
‘Hussain’s House Live is about bringing everyone together – from businesses and schools to charities – to take a stand and show young people that emotional well-being isn’t something that can be shrugged off.’
Contact
For further media information please contact: Robin Bisson, Senior Press Officer, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, robin.bisson@kcl.ac.uk / +44 20 7848 5377 / +44 7718 697176